Eastern NM water pipeline project receives $160 million

Crews build a pipeline that will deliver Ute Reservoir water to Clovis, Texico, Portales, and Elida, and Cannon Air Force Base. The project received $160 million this year from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. (Source: Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority)

A decadeslong project to pipe water from the Ute Reservoir to eastern New Mexico communities will receive $160 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation this year.

The money is a “gamechanger” for towns relying on the rapidly depleting Ogallala Aquifer, said Jim Lucero, a Portales city councilor and board member of the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority.

“Without this project, we would probably have a pretty bleak future to try to get by with the limited water resources that we have,” Lucero said.

The Eastern New Mexico Rural Water Project, or Ute Pipeline Project, includes 120 miles of pipelines, three pump stations and a treatment plant.

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Ute Reservoir in Quay County stores the state’s share of the Canadian River.

Water piped from the reservoir will serve Clovis, Texico, Portales, Elida and Cannon Air Force Base.

Clovis Mayor Michael Morris, who chairs the water board, said the project is now expected to be completed in five years – several years ahead of the original timeline.

Crews have finished the pipeline section that connects Clovis and Cannon.

The segment linking Cannon and Portales is under construction and the utility will soon solicit bids for the portion extending north from Cannon toward the reservoir.

“This amount of funding allows us to really speed up all of that work, and gets us a long way down the road to being connected to that renewable source of water,” Morris said.

The money comes from the infrastructure law Congress passed last year.

New Mexico received the largest allocation of rural water project funding, with more appropriations for the pipeline expected over the next five years.

The funding is key for rural areas navigating drought and climate change, said Tanya Trujillo, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science.

“I know how important this project is to utilize surface water to supplement the groundwater supplies that we’re very concerned about,” she said.

The pipeline also received $17.4 million from the recent federal spending bill, and $30 million from the state Legislature and the governor’s capital outlay this year.

The water authority will spend $20.7 million on the project in 2022.

State Engineer Mike Hamman commended the municipalities for reversing the trend of relentlessly pumping the aquifer.

“It’s dawned on us that we can’t do it that way any more,” Hamman said, “and it’s been on the radar of everybody that’s tapped into the Ogallala, particularly in the more shallow portion of it that underlies eastern New Mexico.”

Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal.